How to prevent skin age from revealing age?

"A year has passed with the sound of firecrackers." Now that I am another year older, do you feel that my skin is getting worse and worse when you look in the mirror? Although I have used a lot of skin care products, my skin is not as tight as I imagined, not to mention other spots and dullness. What is the reason for this? How can I take care of my facial skin to keep it tight?

Let me talk to you about this issue today.

01. Why does the skin become loose?

In fact, if you want to tighten your facial skin, you must first figure out a question: what causes sagging facial skin? You may think of superficial factors such as age and stress, but what are the deeper reasons? What makes our skin full of elasticity?

The answer is actually familiar to everyone: collagen.

Collagen is one of the important structural components of the skin. It is the filling and supporting substance of the skin. Collagen is composed of multiple cross-linked spiral protein chains, which create collagen fibers with extremely high elasticity. This is why collagen makes the skin very soft and strong.

However, as we age, cells age significantly and their functions begin to decline. As a result, the ability to synthesize collagen decreases, resulting in a gradual loss of collagen in the skin. While our surface skin still maintains its original size, the gap between collagen cellulose and the elastin matrix increases, weakening the support network. This results in a loss of facial firmness and sagging skin [1].

Of course, if the skin cells are strongly affected by the outside world due to a harsh daily environment, such as staying in places with severe ultraviolet rays for a long time, it will also interfere with the regeneration of skin collagen and will also cause skin sagging.

Because of this, many times, when faced with sagging skin, the strategy is to supplement collagen, replenishing what is lacking.

02. Types of collagen

However, there are some tricks to supplement collagen. Often, we tend to mistakenly believe that collagen is a single component, but in fact it is not. Collagen accounts for 25-30% of the total protein and is basically distributed in various tissues of the human body. According to its characteristics, it can be divided into many types, such as the most common types I-IV collagen.

Type I collagen: This is the collagen we are most familiar with, accounting for more than 85% of the collagen in the human body. Type I collagen is widely distributed in various parts of the human body, such as our skin, tendons, ligaments and bones. Because its cellulose is relatively thick, it has strong tensile strength;

Type II collagen: mainly found in cartilage, especially in joints;

Type III collagen: can form finer fibril networks, so it exists in loose connective tissues such as skin, blood vessels and internal organs;

Type IV collagen: exists as a component of the basement membrane.

If we rashly supplement collagen, it may not be able to specifically address the sagging of our skin, so we must pay more attention to the collagen that our skin lacks.

03. Collagen that the skin needs most

So, which type of collagen does our skin need most?

The answer is type I collagen.

Type I collagen not only has the highest proportion, for example, more than 85% of the collagen in our skin is type I collagen. This type of collagen can provide support for the skin and form the skin structure, so it plays a key role in maintaining a clear facial structure. Compared with other types of collagen, type I collagen has the longest collagen helical chain, thus forming a stable structure, so its elasticity is also the highest, and it will not break even under strong pulling. This highly elastic muscle base structure can make the skin have better resistance, flexibility and elasticity.

Therefore, if you want to restore skin firmness and elasticity, type I collagen is the most critical.

04. How to replenish collagen for the skin?

Common strategies currently include direct supplementation and oral administration. However, no matter which mode is adopted, it is generally an exogenous addition, so it is difficult to meet the needs of the skin, not to mention that the main source of collagen is animal extraction, which may cause certain discomfort or even allergies.

Therefore, researchers have been looking for ingredients that can activate the body's own collagen regeneration ability, so that the skin can produce collagen on its own to achieve skin firming. Of course, it has been discovered and repeatedly confirmed that such ingredients exist in nature, and some functional skin care products have begun to add these ingredients to supplement collagen.

To be honest, dealing with skin aging and sagging has been a hotly debated topic for a long time. Although the loss of collagen is a natural phenomenon, it is meaningful to increase facial firmness and make the skin more elastic by trying some functional skin care products.

Ref.

1 Baroni, Eloina do Rocio Valenga, et al. "Influence of aging on the quality of the skin of white women: the role of collagen." Acta cirurgica brasileira 27 (2012): 736-740.